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Here's my final submission piece for my group stitchingpirates Finish The WIP Contest . Here was my starter entry:

FIRSTTTT PLACEEEEE

This is my very first, and hopefully very last, Heaven and Earth Designs (commonly HAED) pattern. This particular pattern comes from a series of "Storykeeps", bookmarks, which are essentially cropped sections of larger artwork. When Mattsma picked this pattern up for me a few years ago as a gift its title was simply Storykeeper Storykeep and was genuinely the only pattern on the whole of the website I thought I might do. And they have a lot of patterns. This bit of original artwork is by Selina Fenech and, if I'm reading the PDF correctly, the pattern for HAED was created by Michele Sayetta.

This is stitched over-one on linen, and if you cross-stitch like a regular human you'll know that that becomes dangerous business as stitches have a tendency to slip under and into the fabric weave itself. It's also stitched with one thread. For comparison, the grand majority of pieces I do on linen are over-two with two threads! The over-one nature of this piece both cuts down on the bulkiness (the stitches are awfully close together) and stops it from being nearly two feet tall. It also means with the 25 count linen that I could fit 25 stitches per inch - this piece is a mere 51 stitches wide which allows the two inch width.

I started this back in October and put it back down for all the work I've been caught up in. Then, a little counter intuitively, I took it with me to work at H&R Block. Since all I'm doing is answering the phone, setting appointments, filing, etc, when I'm between tasks my bossman lets me work on stitching, beading, and such. Well when I'm stuck at a desk waiting for the phone to ring for several hours and there's no internet to distract me I get a whollllllle lot of work done. So this was finished in just about a month! Customers coming in often commented on what I was doing, and how I must be going blind, or how they used to cross-stitch but don't do it anymore and it was never that tiny but oh gosh what hard work you do yessss thank you would you like to make an appointment already-

On one part, I am really happy with how this turned out. My stitches are clean, the colors went together as they should, the final piece is nice enough that I went and got it framed for myself. It is truly something I was happy to show off to customers coming in and will be something I continue to be proud of when Mom predictably waltzes people into my room to boast. Can you hear the "but"?

But.... this style of stitching simply isn't my thing. I'm reluctant to complain about it because I know - I know - that a great amount of patterns, especially those sold en masse all around the web and those given out as freebies, are done in this style. Before I really got into my own design work these types of patterns are the ones I was making, and I even stitched a few. Most prominently, Resonant from cosmicbound 's artwork is done this way:

And many of the freebie prize patterns I do for stitchingpirates are done in this way, like this one Katjakay finished of her own photograph:

And! That's just fine. Because a lot of people have no grief or complaints with this style of stitching. HAED and people who swear by this style will tell you: it's simple. There's no backstitching, there's no beads, no partial stitches or anything fancy. Just Xs.

Now... HAED is big. Like, they sell in magazines, and there's organized foreign piracy boards that make a point of knowing when HAED has a sale so that they can hoard up as much of it as they can and spread the patterns around. Oddly enough, while I'm comfortable tearing down problems with designers I greatly admire, when it comes to HAED I find myself horribly intimidated. Obviously Mirabilia has similar magazine sales and a good percentage of piracy out there, but still when I worked on my Dressmaker's Daughter piece I pointed out all the things I didn't like and made changes and had no second thoughts about it. Honestly, I don't know why it's different, and it's not going to stop me from continuing on below, but I thought it worth mentioning. It's weird for me to be so up and bothered about sharing my complaints.

HAED is worthy because they have an amazing selection of artists under their belt. Amy Brown is the notable name for me, since I grew up with her artwork in my home. And I thought a lot about it: if you wanted amazing artwork like Amy Brown in cross stitch, HAED is the place you go. And, far as I know, artists like Amy Brown don't really care what a cross-stitch pattern turns out to be. They get the royalties for use and may not even know, let alone care, about things I consider to be quality control. Case in point: the Storykeeper pattern was hardly readable to me. It came in a PDF, which was fine, and the symbols were clear, which was appreciated, but the symbols were obviously not chosen by hand.

How do I know this? Because they're using either the same program I use for my patterns or a very similar one. The symbols started out as 50 and when I opened up my program to convert it into symbols I could actually read wouldn't you know it - the 50 symbols on the chart were exactly the same first 50 symbols the program automatically selects for you. Which means a few symbols that're terribly similar, like, say, a dot and a circle, end up being next to each other on the chart.

There's also, like in the majority of computer generated patterns, no color condensing. This could be a stylistic choice, since eliminating that one slighty-off-shade-of-tan for a very similar slightly-off-shade-of-tan to lower the color count is something HAED just doesn't do... but I suspect its more that when they generate the pattern they don't go through and go, "Hey, you know, that pale shade of blue is used for an entire two stitches in the piece, maybe it's just not needed". Again, how do I know this? It's because I used to do it in my pattern generation.

What really ended up steaming me as I stitched this was a request that came in to me for a custom pattern back in January this year. My customer wanted a piece converted from an artist here on DA, she even got the permissions and everything and was ready to go! And she wanted it in HAED's no backstitching, no fancy nonsense, massive tapestry style. So what was her problem? Why did she come to me? It's because HAED charges an absurd $125 to do what takes hardly an hour, and - yes, I am sure they are busy with how large their business is - say it'll take 4-6 weeks to complete the order.

Insert a dramatic pause for me right here, because that is beyond unreasonable. My customer-to-be told me I should up my custom pattern pricing because of it, but really it flared me up so bad I wanted to just do everything for free! How dare they charge so much! Name recognition. "I have a custom HAED chart!" Except, unlike designer clothing brands, HAED is nothing but a reflection of my early beginner, no skill, two seconds of computer generated work.

So... yeah... I have grief with them.

...but even still, this piece is really pretty.

I'm just not happy about it.

Other than the pattern redrawing that I did for myself the 'large' change I made to the actual pattern was removing a shade of blue (or purple?) that was only used for two or three stitches, I can't remember now, lowering the color count from 50 to 49. I also replaced all the randomly inserted Kreinik with plain white because honestly, HAED, can you just take two seconds to make a pattern adjustment, the white on her skin does not randomly begin sparkling, and I didn't have it in me to stitch Kreinik into 25 count linen over-one. Otherwise... there's really nothing to this piece. It's only X's. No partials, no backstitching, no beads. I would complain about a lack of blended colors, but seeing as these are "designed" to be over-one it's not that surprising.
Alright I'm done whining.

Color Total: 49
Size: 2 x 10.25 inches stitching
Time: 94 hours
25 Count ivory Linen

Description

Full Shop | Etsy | Facebook | Instagram

Here's my final submission piece for my group stitchingpirates Finish The WIP Contest . Here was my starter entry:

FIRSTTTT PLACEEEEE

This is my very first, and hopefully very last, Heaven and Earth Designs (commonly HAED) pattern. This particular pattern comes from a series of "Storykeeps", bookmarks, which are essentially cropped sections of larger artwork. When Mattsma picked this pattern up for me a few years ago as a gift its title was simply Storykeeper Storykeep and was genuinely the only pattern on the whole of the website I thought I might do. And they have a lot of patterns. This bit of original artwork is by Selina Fenech and, if I'm reading the PDF correctly, the pattern for HAED was created by Michele Sayetta.

This is stitched over-one on linen, and if you cross-stitch like a regular human you'll know that that becomes dangerous business as stitches have a tendency to slip under and into the fabric weave itself. It's also stitched with one thread. For comparison, the grand majority of pieces I do on linen are over-two with two threads! The over-one nature of this piece both cuts down on the bulkiness (the stitches are awfully close together) and stops it from being nearly two feet tall. It also means with the 25 count linen that I could fit 25 stitches per inch - this piece is a mere 51 stitches wide which allows the two inch width.

I started this back in October and put it back down for all the work I've been caught up in. Then, a little counter intuitively, I took it with me to work at H&R Block. Since all I'm doing is answering the phone, setting appointments, filing, etc, when I'm between tasks my bossman lets me work on stitching, beading, and such. Well when I'm stuck at a desk waiting for the phone to ring for several hours and there's no internet to distract me I get a whollllllle lot of work done. So this was finished in just about a month! Customers coming in often commented on what I was doing, and how I must be going blind, or how they used to cross-stitch but don't do it anymore and it was never that tiny but oh gosh what hard work you do yessss thank you would you like to make an appointment already-

On one part, I am really happy with how this turned out. My stitches are clean, the colors went together as they should, the final piece is nice enough that I went and got it framed for myself. It is truly something I was happy to show off to customers coming in and will be something I continue to be proud of when Mom predictably waltzes people into my room to boast. Can you hear the "but"?

But.... this style of stitching simply isn't my thing. I'm reluctant to complain about it because I know - I know - that a great amount of patterns, especially those sold en masse all around the web and those given out as freebies, are done in this style. Before I really got into my own design work these types of patterns are the ones I was making, and I even stitched a few. Most prominently, Resonant from cosmicbound 's artwork is done this way:

And many of the freebie prize patterns I do for stitchingpirates are done in this way, like this one Katjakay finished of her own photograph:

And! That's just fine. Because a lot of people have no grief or complaints with this style of stitching. HAED and people who swear by this style will tell you: it's simple. There's no backstitching, there's no beads, no partial stitches or anything fancy. Just Xs.

Now... HAED is big. Like, they sell in magazines, and there's organized foreign piracy boards that make a point of knowing when HAED has a sale so that they can hoard up as much of it as they can and spread the patterns around. Oddly enough, while I'm comfortable tearing down problems with designers I greatly admire, when it comes to HAED I find myself horribly intimidated. Obviously Mirabilia has similar magazine sales and a good percentage of piracy out there, but still when I worked on my Dressmaker's Daughter piece I pointed out all the things I didn't like and made changes and had no second thoughts about it. Honestly, I don't know why it's different, and it's not going to stop me from continuing on below, but I thought it worth mentioning. It's weird for me to be so up and bothered about sharing my complaints.

HAED is worthy because they have an amazing selection of artists under their belt. Amy Brown is the notable name for me, since I grew up with her artwork in my home. And I thought a lot about it: if you wanted amazing artwork like Amy Brown in cross stitch, HAED is the place you go. And, far as I know, artists like Amy Brown don't really care what a cross-stitch pattern turns out to be. They get the royalties for use and may not even know, let alone care, about things I consider to be quality control. Case in point: the Storykeeper pattern was hardly readable to me. It came in a PDF, which was fine, and the symbols were clear, which was appreciated, but the symbols were obviously not chosen by hand.

How do I know this? Because they're using either the same program I use for my patterns or a very similar one. The symbols started out as 50 and when I opened up my program to convert it into symbols I could actually read wouldn't you know it - the 50 symbols on the chart were exactly the same first 50 symbols the program automatically selects for you. Which means a few symbols that're terribly similar, like, say, a dot and a circle, end up being next to each other on the chart.

There's also, like in the majority of computer generated patterns, no color condensing. This could be a stylistic choice, since eliminating that one slighty-off-shade-of-tan for a very similar slightly-off-shade-of-tan to lower the color count is something HAED just doesn't do... but I suspect its more that when they generate the pattern they don't go through and go, "Hey, you know, that pale shade of blue is used for an entire two stitches in the piece, maybe it's just not needed". Again, how do I know this? It's because I used to do it in my pattern generation.

What really ended up steaming me as I stitched this was a request that came in to me for a custom pattern back in January this year. My customer wanted a piece converted from an artist here on DA, she even got the permissions and everything and was ready to go! And she wanted it in HAED's no backstitching, no fancy nonsense, massive tapestry style. So what was her problem? Why did she come to me? It's because HAED charges an absurd $125 to do what takes hardly an hour, and - yes, I am sure they are busy with how large their business is - say it'll take 4-6 weeks to complete the order.

Insert a dramatic pause for me right here, because that is beyond unreasonable. My customer-to-be told me I should up my custom pattern pricing because of it, but really it flared me up so bad I wanted to just do everything for free! How dare they charge so much! Name recognition. "I have a custom HAED chart!" Except, unlike designer clothing brands, HAED is nothing but a reflection of my early beginner, no skill, two seconds of computer generated work.

So... yeah... I have grief with them.

...but even still, this piece is really pretty.

I'm just not happy about it.

Other than the pattern redrawing that I did for myself the 'large' change I made to the actual pattern was removing a shade of blue (or purple?) that was only used for two or three stitches, I can't remember now, lowering the color count from 50 to 49. I also replaced all the randomly inserted Kreinik with plain white because honestly, HAED, can you just take two seconds to make a pattern adjustment, the white on her skin does not randomly begin sparkling, and I didn't have it in me to stitch Kreinik into 25 count linen over-one. Otherwise... there's really nothing to this piece. It's only X's. No partials, no backstitching, no beads. I would complain about a lack of blended colors, but seeing as these are "designed" to be over-one it's not that surprising.
Alright I'm done whining.

Color Total: 49
Size: 2 x 10.25 inches stitching
Time: 94 hours
25 Count ivory Linen